Oscar's Biggest Snubs: A Post-Mortem

This year's Oscar nominations produced an equally noteworthy list of omissions who'll be quietly turned away at the Kodak Theater doors, should a ceremony ever materialize. (Tazering to follow if they get insistent.) Our analysis of the 2008 Snubees: More »

A Mighty Kerfluffle

· Paramount Vantage just can't win with A Mighty Heart: They curl Angelina Jolie's hair and slather her in bronzer so she seems less Caucasian-y, and they catch shit. They invite the Council on American-Islamic Relations to co-sponsor a panel discussion on religious tolerance, and a Jewish activist likens it to "David Duke co-sponsoring 'Schindler's List.'" At least Jolie isn't pissing off reporters by asking them to sign waivers demanding they don't ask questions about her personal life, because they hardly need another headache. [Variety] More »

Why We Don't Blame Angelina For This Mighty Piece Of Crap

On Wednesday night one of us attended the premiere of the most intriguing product of the Hollywood "stop paying attention to our traffic violations and start paying attention to us heroically shedding light on international hotspots" wave that was the movie A Mighty Heart. It was not a very good movie, though Angelina Jolie acted the shit out of it and Michael Winterbottom's direction so autistically true to life that we could practically smell the streets of Karachi. (Scent: not so fresh!) No, what seemed to be wrong was the story. It was teeming with requisite ingredients — love, terrorism, horror, goodness, nuance, spies, counterspies, nebbishy journalists, conspiracy theorizing brown people — so teeming you would forgive it if the teemingness was the problem. But it was hollow and small and annoyingly unambitious, and you had trouble caring about Mariane Pearl, who in the final scene of the movie gives birth to her and Daniel Pearl's son alone. (She gives birth alone — why? Because she is a semi-insufferable woman who romanticizes and dramatizes her every action and giving birth alone is supposed to symbolize some great triumph of the human spirit? Or because no one really likes her all that much? Or because putting an Eason Jordan character in the movie would be kinda distracting?) After the jump, Moe weighs in more on the movie and the book that inspired it. [Jezebel]